My guest today is Shalelia Dillard, the Founder and Executive Director at SCD Enrichment Program, a nonprofit organization that recruits and supports students of color in accelerated coursework. The SCD Program offers a wide array of services to schools and students, including cultural education workshops, professional development, advanced coursework, equity audits, summer camps, cultural history courses, and more.

In our conversation, Shalelia breaks down some of the historical and current inequities that persist in our education system and identifies what she thinks are some shifts that our country would need to make in order to combat this.  She shares her personal story that  follows her experiences from being a gifted and homeless student of color in a systemically racist education system to deciding to take her largest gamble in quitting her job as a science teacher to start her own business.